The Singles Road Trip and A Good Storyline

The Singles Road Trip and A Good Storyline

This is a guest post from one of your fellow travelers, JC Caduldulan. He joined us in Singles Road Trip #7 to beautiful island of Biri, Northern Samar. JC works as a Senior Recruitment Specialiste for a BPO company based in Mandaluyong. Read on to see his side of the story.

I’m all for a good storyline.

Everyone who’s met me before I joined one of Experience Philippines’ Road Trips knows that I’m a huge human-ball of insecurity so when one of my closest friends introduced me to the idea of travelling with strangers, she wasn’t surprised to see me react like she just told me to throw myself in the fire.

The hardest part was convincing myself to finally step outside my comfort zone. While I felt like I’ve already accepted who I was at the time, at the back of my mind I knew that like some of the main characters on my favorite shows, my story doesn’t end on just settling with what I felt was an underachievement. And as a huge TV fan, I’m all for a good storyline.

What did I get myself into?

So I did what a typical neurotic person would do. I obsessively went through their website and carefully read everything. The two bullet points that stuck to me were the ones that said “Be open minded about new things” and “We are going to travel with people we do not know”. I was mostly worried about the latter, and I spent hours trying to decide whether or not I should go through with it. But I underestimated my own impulsivity so the next thing I knew was I was filling out the registration form and was mouthing the words WHAT DID I JUST GET MYSELF INTO as soon as I submitted it.

And it’s a good thing that I did because joining the Singles Road Trip last November was probably one of the best things I’ve done in the past few years.

There’s something about travelling with complete strangers that gives you a sense of liberation. You are who you are to these people the moment they met you; free of being judged from who you were before and full of possibilities of who you will become when this is all over. Each of you gets to feel that. And you also get an adventure to some of this country’s most beautiful places to top it off.

And that tied us all together

It’s amazing how much you can learn not only about the human nature itself but also about yourself just by listening to other people’s stories. I’ve always been fascinated about what motivates other people’s actions so I was particularly interested in finding out why the people I was with decided to join the trip in the first place. The reasons ranged from trying to heal a broken heart, to wanting to have a new set of friends, to plainly seeking an adventure. But we all knew that joining wasn’t an easy decision to make for every single one of us. And that tied us all together even tighter.

That was probably the point where I realized that the only thing that keeps strangers from being relevant to our lives is the opportunity to spend time with them. And I’m glad I was able to, even if it was all random, because some of the best friends I have now are the ones I met here.

There’s a place for your kind of weird

But the best thing that I took away from this trip was self-discovery. I went into this trip as someone who’s extremely reserved and socially awkward. While I don’t think I overcame it completely, feeling like I finally took a step towards self-improvement is priceless. I learned that I love people, which is a big deal for me because I used to think that I hate everyone. And I also learned that no matter how weird you think you are, there’s a place for your kind of weird in other people’s hearts. You just have to be brave enough to allow these people to actually get to know you.

“No matter how weird you think you are, there’s a place for your kind of weird in other people’s hearts.” – (JC, 2016)

Interested in joining the Singles Road Trip?

Our ‪upcoming ‎Singles Road Trip‬ is already full, but if you don’t want to miss out on the next Singles Road Trip,